Stabilized plethysms for the classical Lie groups

The plethysms of the Weyl characters associated to a classical Lie group by the symmetric functions stabilize in large rank. In the case of a power sum plethysm, we prove that the coefficients of the decomposition of this stabilized form on the basis of Weyl characters are branching coefficients which can be determined by a simple algorithm. This generalizes in particular some classical results by Littlewood on the power sum plethysms of Schur functions. We also establish explicit formulas for the outer multiplicities appearing in the decomposition of the tensor square of any irreducible finite dimensional module into its symmetric and antisymmetric parts. These multiplicities can notably be expressed in terms of the Littlewood-Richardson coefficients

Parabolic Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials, plethysm and gereralized Hall-Littlewood functions for classical types

We use power sums plethysm operators to introduce H functions which interpolate between the Weyl characters and the Hall-Littlewood functions Q' corresponding to classical Lie groups. The coefficients of these functions on the basis of Weyl characters are parabolic Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials and thus, are nonnegative. We prove that they can be regarded as quantizations of branching coefficients obtained by restriction to certain Levi subgroups. The H functions associated to linear groups coincide with the polynomials introduced by Lascoux Leclerc and Thibon (LLT polynomials).Comment: To appear in European Journal of Combinatoric

Geometric complexity theory and matrix powering

Valiant's famous determinant versus permanent problem is the flagship problem in algebraic complexity theory. Mulmuley and Sohoni (Siam J Comput 2001, 2008) introduced geometric complexity theory, an approach to study this and related problems via algebraic geometry and representation theory. Their approach works by multiplying the permanent polynomial with a high power of a linear form (a process called padding) and then comparing the orbit closures of the determinant and the padded permanent. This padding was recently used heavily to show no-go results for the method of shifted partial derivatives (Efremenko, Landsberg, Schenck, Weyman, 2016) and for geometric complexity theory (Ikenmeyer Panova, FOCS 2016 and B\"urgisser, Ikenmeyer Panova, FOCS 2016). Following a classical homogenization result of Nisan (STOC 1991) we replace the determinant in geometric complexity theory with the trace of a variable matrix power. This gives an equivalent but much cleaner homogeneous formulation of geometric complexity theory in which the padding is removed. This radically changes the representation theoretic questions involved to prove complexity lower bounds. We prove that in this homogeneous formulation there are no orbit occurrence obstructions that prove even superlinear lower bounds on the complexity of the permanent. This is the first no-go result in geometric complexity theory that rules out superlinear lower bounds in some model. Interestingly---in contrast to the determinant---the trace of a variable matrix power is not uniquely determined by its stabilizer

Multipartite Quantum States and their Marginals

Subsystems of composite quantum systems are described by reduced density matrices, or quantum marginals. Important physical properties often do not depend on the whole wave function but rather only on the marginals. Not every collection of reduced density matrices can arise as the marginals of a quantum state. Instead, there are profound compatibility conditions -- such as Pauli's exclusion principle or the monogamy of quantum entanglement -- which fundamentally influence the physics of many-body quantum systems and the structure of quantum information. The aim of this thesis is a systematic and rigorous study of the general relation between multipartite quantum states, i.e., states of quantum systems that are composed of several subsystems, and their marginals. In the first part, we focus on the one-body marginals of multipartite quantum states; in the second part, we study general quantum marginals from the perspective of entropy.Comment: PhD thesis, ETH Zurich. The first part contains material from arXiv:1208.0365, arXiv:1204.0741, and arXiv:1204.4379. The second part is based on arXiv:1302.6990 and arXiv:1210.046

Wreath Macdonald operators

We construct a novel family of difference-permutation operators and prove that they are diagonalized by the wreath Macdonald $P$-polynomials; the eigenvalues are written in terms of elementary symmetric polynomials of arbitrary degree. Our operators arise from integral formulas for the action of the horizontal Heisenberg subalgebra in the vertex representation of the corresponding quantum toroidal algebraComment: v1, 47pp. Comments are welcome

An Invitation to the Generalized Saturation Conjecture

We report about some results, interesting examples, problems and conjectures revolving around the parabolic Kostant partition functions, the parabolic Kostka polynomials and ``saturation'' properties of several generalizations of the Littlewood--Richardson numbers.Comment: 79 pages, new sections, new results and example